Remind HN: Father's Day | Hacker News Reader

Remind HN: Father's Day

72 pointssophiebits35 comments

At least, it is in the US. Go, do something special!

HN remembered. I wonder if my kids will. :-)

(Actually we never paid that much attention to greeting card holidays. So if they dont call, it's my fault in raising them to be all around skeptics.)

Hey, they called. (I knew the suspense was killing you guys. :) They are good people. I love them.

If I knew where my father was or how to contact him, I would! Alas, I will pay homage to the Great Father of us all, and pray for my mortal father, wherever he is.

Sadly, Dad's been gone for 18 years and my last grandfather passed away last year and I'm only 29. I'll be raising a beer to their memory though.

Me too. I'll join you. Here's to our fathers and grandfathers. And to their sons.

I'm glad you brought up your grandfathers. Both of mine led very difficult lives and made great sacrifices so that their children and grandchildren could have a better chance than they did. Whenever I have doubts about my project (which isn't often), I remind myself that they came here so that I could do this. Kinda puts things in perspective.

Right there with you guys... I lost my Dad about three months ago... he was my best friend.

I'm with you on the grandfathers too... It makes me proud to think of all the ancestry behind me - behind everyone really. All the people who have worked so hard to get us and the rest of humanity to this magical time.

Sometimes when I'm feeling down, I watch this little clip on youtube - I don't have an ounce of Viking ancestry, but I like the message:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN-no1Ka7yU

Lo, there do I see my father.

Lo, there do I see my mother.

And my sister and my brother

Lo, there do I see the line of my people

Back to the beginning.

Lo, they do call to me.

They bid me take my place among them

In the halls of Valhalla

Where the brave may live forever.

What is the point of celebrating something at time intervals that correspond to one rotation of the earth around the sun? Isn't that completely arbitrary?

Well, lots of things in life are completely arbitrary. Just do what works for you.

Classic. Absolutely classic.

Because we get a lot more done that way than if we packed all those celebrations into one earth's rotation about it's own axis.

We could pack them into one rotation of the sun around the galactic center and get a lot more done, but then lots of lifes would be without a single celebration.

Because you're surrounded by people with emotions and feelings and one of those feelings is to be made feeling extra-extra-special and an anniversary day naturally slips into that.

Does that line of thought inevitably lead to nihilism? I mean, isn't life just as arbitrary?

Almost all of life is arbitrary and meaningless. Denying this is not particularly enlightened, and ultimately tends to get rejected by the intellectually curious. On the other hand, seeing absolutely no meaning results in wasted time. The least bad answer seems to be leading a balanced life, with a few elements that are very important, from which meaning is created.

so, to summarize, Yes but there's no point getting all upset about it.

Richard Dawkins has a quote along the lines of, "Why do we have to look at a beautiful planet and demand a reason behind its being here? Can't we appreciate it for what it is?"

So it is with life. Perhaps in the long run we'll all be dead and the universe will cave in, but in the meantime the things we do and say matter, and there is beauty in the world to appreciate. So I went to the boardwalk with my father and brother and we all had a terrific time, and having a good time was reason in itself to do it.

Once you give up the religious/gamers' view that everything you do has a score, you can appreciate things for what they are rather than for any ultimate result.

Life boils down to aesthetic choices, best as I can tell.

Something can be arbitrary and still worthwhile.

At the risk of sounding like I don't have a sense of humor- it's not really arbitrary (at least not until you dig way deeper). Celebrating at a time when the earth has completed a revolution allows people to remember exactly when to celebrate- kind of an old-school time-management trick, so to speak. If we didn't have calendars, we could still have rocks sticking up with a line engraved somewhere on the ground to give us that same reminder- almost exactly once every year.

It's a convenience. ;)

Or even a phone call...just do something.

Phone calls are special, unless you talk to him every day on the phone.

An email is the best I can do. I don't like talking to my father.

That falls into the "something" category :).

I know. Makes me a little sad though.

Not in Australia. September 6th here.

Not in Romania. We don't even celebrate this.

Just wait until the flower/holiday cards industry gets bigger.

Looking at the way we imported Valentine's Day and Halloween, it could be possible.

"A father knows when to be a kid, specially when he needs to be a man"

Play with your kids, if you have them.

Hug your father, while you have him.

Remind HN: Tuesday is June 23rd and the Monday after that is June 29th.

Remind HN: Meaningless sniping may be useful on other sites, but here we all try and contribute to the discussion.

What discussion? You know, when I told my dad how you guys took my karma away from me for making a joke about a post about something I should have as a reminder in the calendar on my phone, it really ruined his Father's Day. I think I might even have seen the beginning of a tear, but he manned-up and held it back.

I might forgive you for being an asshole if you were particularly witty about it, but you're not. You're sniping for no reason.

I'm poking a little fun at these types of threads because let's face it, they have nothing to do with this site. And anyone who needs a Hacker News post to remind them when Fathers Day is and what its purpose is... is clearly missing the point of Fathers Day.

Bottom line, I'm kidding around. You can give me the benefit of the doubt of making a little joke with no ill-intent... or you can call me an asshole. I'll leave it up to you to decide which is worse.

Heh. I called you an asshole in regard to your second post, not that original one. I actually agree with its intent: These posts are rather silly. But snarking about it wasn't the right thing to do, IMHO.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com